The present invention relates to the field of updating contact information, and more particularly to systems and methods for using databases of contact data and identifying alternate contact information for individuals, businesses, or households using relationships between contact data elements stored in the databases.
In today's highly dynamic and mobile environment for both business and personal communication, points of contact, such as postal addresses, telephone numbers, and internet electronic mail (Email) addresses, are continually changing. Points of contact, or personally identifiable information (hereinafter, “PII”), also include such items as birth date and governmentally-issued identification number (such as a drivers license number, social security number, or passport number) that don't often change, but can be used to identify a recipient. Such information is typically stored in fixed databases and address books of persons or businesses with which an individual has interactions, but these databases are usually not actively maintained and become quickly outdated. For purposes of this specification, the following definitions are used:
Recipient—a person, household, institution or business that changes their PII over time and with which communication is desired—this has the same meaning as “entity” which is used in the claims;
Personally Identifiable Information (hereinafter, “PII”)—postal addresses, telephone numbers, and internet electronic mail (Email) addresses, birth date, and governmentally-issued identification number (such as a drivers license number, social security number, or passport number) used to identify a Recipient;
Sender—a person, institution or business desiring communication with the Recipient;
Data Processor—a person, institution or business that is receiving and processing data records to maintain a database of PII; and
Data Provider—a person, institution or business that provides data records to the Data Processor.
Further, “postal address” is defined as that set of geographic data used by postal or delivery services for delivering mail, including street, city, state, and zip codes.
Since updating such contact information is typically dependent upon a Recipient voluntarily providing timely, periodic, and correct notification to the Sender, the PII data in the Sender's database is not typically updated, and once contact is lost, it is difficult to re-establish. An area where particular deficiency occurs is in on-going maintenance of Email addresses, which tend to change more frequently than most other contact points due to situational changes, such as job changes, temporary or permanent relocation, Internet service provider (ISP) changes, and also due to the fact that a change of Email address does not require a change of physical location.
When the Email address is the principal means of communication with the Recipient, loss of contact through Email may not be repairable since there are only limited broad-based, national, or international archival systems or databases having updated Email addresses, unlike a reasonably-updated telephone book or a conventional postal-forwarding service. Most conventional address updating services are dependent on having a current and/or a historical postal address, which can be manually linked to the identity of a Recipient via a postal-service forwarding-address database.
In a postal-forwarding service, change of address forms at a post office may be filled out by the Recipient, thereby allowing mail to be forwarded to a new mailing address. In the United States, for example, the U.S. Postal Service maintains such a database and licenses the data to companies that then use this information to maintain National Change Of Address (NCOA) services, wherein Senders submit their existing list of customers and their last known postal addresses to the NCOA service provider. The NCOA service provider then returns updated customer records that include a new postal address. NCOA services are useful to Senders because there is one central administrator that collects all postal address updates, such as the U.S. Postal Service. Telephone books are similarly comprehensive because there are only a few phone system providers, and they share directory information with each other.
Alternatively, the Sender may internally update an address by identifying an instance when the Recipient changes a PII element. Most companies that maintain contact information for people they do business with have some sort of internal PII-updating mechanism. For example, a bank may encourage the Recipient to contact a customer service representative in order to update PII, or the bank's web site may have a customer profile area where the Recipient can update PII. Disadvantageously, this method is dependent on the time and resources that a Sender allocates to develop facilities for the Recipients to update their PII, and, more importantly, this method, like the Postal Service's change of address forms, is dependent upon Recipients being cognizant that the Senders desire updated PII, the Recipient wishing to provide Senders with their updated PII, and Recipients actually expending time and effort updating their PII with Senders.
Conventional Email Change of Address (ECOA) systems mimic NCOA systems. Similar to an NCOA system, ECOA systems rely on submission of change of address notifications from Recipients. However, unlike with postal mail that is primarily controlled by a government postal service, there is no central facility that maintains Email addresses. Each company, institution, or individual that manages an Email domain, or computers with Email addresses, determines the Email addresses that are permissible on that system, and there are millions of domains on the Internet. In using such systems, client companies typically provide the ECOA service provider (i.e., the Data Processor) with a customer Email list, and the Data Processor provides new Email addresses for as many people as possible. The data used by these services is typically derived from three sources: 1) Recipients explicitly registering change of Email address information with the service; 2) Recipients explicitly registering alternate Email address(es) they may be reached at if the primary Email address is no longer valid; and/or 3) specialty software programming modules capturing change of address information at partner (i.e., Data Providers or other Senders) web sites as the information is updated, and then sharing that information with the ECOA provider.
In this last case, specialty software programming modules are installed at the Data Provider location where a Recipient might update contact information. The mechanism will detect if an Email address is changed and either store such information for later use or forward it to the ECOA service provider. Disadvantageously, in order to automate the collection process, such specialty software programming modules, which need to be interfaced with or merged into the existing operational programming modules of the Data Provider, may have incompatible interfaces or may interfere with the normal business operation of the Data Provider's software modules. Thus, many companies are reluctant to install such systems, because the changes may adversely impact the operation of their other business software and their limited human resources may be insufficient to install and debug such modules.
Further, because ECOA service providers are not central authorities like the U.S. Postal Service with monopoly market presence, they must advertise themselves or otherwise make Recipients, Senders or Data Providers aware that the service exists, and these arrangements can be prohibitively expensive.
A third type of address change service method exists. By maintaining large databases of postal addresses and email addresses, Email “Append” service providers have the ability to provide one type of PII when presented with PII of a different type. For example, starting with a database containing the Email addresses and postal addresses of Recipients associated together, entering an Email address can yield a postal address and vice versa. Disadvantageously, if a Sender uses only one type of PII for contacting a Recipient, for example, solely an Email address, the service of an Email Append provider is of no use because these append service providers provide a different type of PII than the one presented to them.
The preceding methods are limited due to 1) the need for the Recipient to manually update and/or otherwise register their PII with the ECOA service provider, 2) the need to install specialized software programming modules to capture PII at multiple Data Providers, or 3) the need for the Sender to have a different type of PII, for example, a postal address, to get the PII desired.
Since no system currently exists that will generate alternate Email address outputs in response to an Email input query without the preceding limitations, there exists a demonstrated need for a system wherein an Email address database can be automatically maintained using non-intrusive data extraction means, wherein generation of alternate PII data for said database does not rely on the action of Recipients, and wherein queries with one type of PII can generate updated PII of the same type, such as an Email address query to the system can generate alternate Email address outputs.